


The Dangling Conversation

by golden_d



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Gratuitous Poetry, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:07:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_d/pseuds/golden_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night with wine in hand, they stayed up till dawn, discussing Dickinson and Bashō, Whitman and Keats, Tennyson and Rilke. And then they broke up an alien prostitution ring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dangling Conversation

Jack adored old Broadway musicals, and Tosh and Owen had compiled quite a blackmail reel of CCTV footage of him belting out "I'm just a girl who cain't say no!" and other choice Rodgers and Hammerstein selections.  
  
On the days of Jack's impromptu performances, Tosh liked to sequester herself with a battered copy of Hans Christian Andersen tales. Suzie liked to sequester herself with Owen. After that ended, she chose to read the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales, wherein everyone died horrible gruesome deaths. (In retrospect, it should have been a warning sign, but Suzie had always been a little strange that way.)   
  
Owen hated to read except when he had to, but he and Ianto shared a fondness for James Bond movies. Jack shared a fondness for James Bond, too, but given his claim that he'd once had a threesome with Sean Connery and Ursula Andress, Ianto suspected his fondness was of a different nature than theirs.  
  
Excepting Jack, they were not the most inclined to the arts, but Suzie could always find time for a scrap of poetry. Ianto had fallen into Ginsberg and Gregory Corso as a teenager and never quite climbed out, but that was something he read alone, in the dark, with a drink. Owen hadn't been able to look at Shakespeare since Katie died. The distraction of poetry - of remembering every single line she had ever read, every lyrical phrase she had studied, each painstakingly chosen word - was what had sustained Toshiko during her time the UNIT cell.  
  
She hadn't been able to read a single haiku since.  
  
Only in her debriefing with Jack had Toshiko said anything about it: when else was the subject of poetry going to come up? It wasn't as though some criminal mastermind was leaving cryptically rhyming hints at the scene of the crime.   
  
But somehow Suzie managed to figure it out. One night, three hours in to a stakeout, set up in a hotel room down the hall from an alien prostitution ring that Jack was attempting to infiltrate, Suzie leaned back in her chair, propped her feet up on the hotel room desk, and said: "So, poetry, huh?"  
  
Tosh froze midway through opening the wine they had ordered from room service (because, Suzie had said, if they were going to be there all night, they might as well get something out of it). "Did someone swap out the Gideon's Bible with a copy of 'Leaves of Grass'?"  
  
"Ooh, no, but that would be a good idea." Suzie eyed the drawer of the bedside table thoughtfully. "No, I'm talking about you. You, and poetry, and UNIT."  
  
With great purpose, Toshiko poured herself a large glass of wine and sat on the edge of the bed farthest away from the desk, balancing her laptop on top of one of the pillows. "I'm not sure what you mean."  
  
"I read the report," Suzie said, "so you don't have to pretend. Jack's never as good as hiding things as he thinks he is. He really ought to change his passwords one of these days."  
  
Tosh had to admit that Jack's passwords were  _incredibly_  easy to hack. "I don't want to talk about it," she said shortly.  
  
"Oh, come on," Suzie wheedled. "Look, Jack's idea of poetry is dirty limericks! Owen wouldn't know a poem if he shagged one! The fact that you could keep yourself going on poetry means that you must have read a lot of it - and enjoyed it, what's more." Seeing Tosh's suspicious glance, she let out a huff of air. "You don't have to talk  _about UNIT_. I just said that for context. Do you know how long it's been since I had a conversation about anything approaching literature?"  
  
Conversations at Torchwood did seem to be mostly about alien guts and weapons. And sexual harassment, but that was most Jack, who seemed to be instigating...something. Was he performing a striptease? She shut the surveillance window quickly; it would alert her if anything happened. "Since uni?" Tosh guessed.  
  
"Probably. I'd meant that to be rhetorical. So: you, me, poetry, conversation?" Suzie asked. "Are you planning on sharing that wine?"  
  
"Help yourself," said Tosh, gesturing to the bottle and other glass. While Suzie poured for herself, Toshiko Thought. She didn't usually Think with a capital T, but this was different. Things That Happened at UNIT merited capital letters. Thus, she Thought. "Bashō," she said, when Suzie had seated herself back at the desk. This required distance. "Haiku are good for centering, for meditating."  
  
"Oh, God," Suzie burst in. "Don't tell me you're one of those zen yoga new age types. I don't think I could deal with that."  
  
Toshiko took a deep breath and a deep drink of wine. "It's a way of reducing stress. I had a lot of stress to reduce."  
  
"But haiku is so--" Suzie waved a hand. "Insipid. Short."  
  
"It loses a lot in translation," she said shortly. "Do you want to talk about poetry or not?"  
  
"Drink more," Suzie advised. "You need to relax, Toshiko. The Praanix aren't going anywhere; we're just here in case Jack balls it all up."  
  
She laughed. "Captain Jack Harkness / at a naked dance party / what could go wrong there?"  
  
Suzie narrowed her eyes, as if she could see the line divisions. "Haiku?"  
  
"It's for more than just meditation," Tosh said calmly. "Though I think I might have just killed the art form with that."  
  
"Something that easily killable can't be worth loving," said Suzie. "You should give up haiku for something better. Dickinson."  
  
"Dickinson?" she raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Emily Dickinson, American poet, wrote mostly in the 1860s--"  
  
"There's only one Dickinson in poetry; it's not like it's a common name. Why her?"  
  
Suzie tilted her head back and gazed up at the ceiling. "I shall know why — when Time is over — And I have ceased to wonder why."  
  
"We never cease to wonder why," Toshiko said. "We're Torchwood. That's what we  _do_."  
  
"You're missing the point on purpose."  
  
"When I miss the point," she replied sweetly, "it's  _always_ on purpose."  
  
Suzie made a note to herself to remember this. "Fine. No haiku, no Dickinson, there's plenty more out there in the poetry world. You've read 'Leaves of Grass,' of course."  
  
"Of course," said Tosh. "But Whitman is so...American. It's all so big and boundless, and who has the time for that?"  
  
"I do," said Suzie, setting down her wine. "I always have the time."  
  
The two looked at each other across the room and sighed, and Tosh debated checking on the progress of the striptease. Finally Suzie ventured:  
  
"You've read Yeats?"  
  
"Who  _hasn't_  read Yeats?"  
  
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer--"  
  
"Yes, I know, I've read it. Even Owen's read that one."  
  
"It's beautiful," Suzie said insistently. "And it's terrible. It's destruction, and it's anarchy, and it's powerful, and--"  
  
" _God_ , but you're grim tonight," said Toshiko. "Have more wine, if it won't make you worse. I don't mind Yeats, and he's got a lovely way with words, but everything I've read of his is just entirely depressing."  
  
"Maybe you're reading the wrong poems."  
  
"Maybe I am. But no one's been able to recommend me anything happier."  
  
"What about Keats?"  
  
"Also depressing, but less because of his poetry and more because he died so young."   
  
" _We'll_  die young," said Suzie abruptly, leaning forward with passionate intensity. "You know we will. We're Torchwood."  
  
Toshiko closed her eyes, envisioning the years left on her contract. At least Keats had known it was coming. "I'm mostly surprised I've lived this long at all."  
  
There was silence.  
  
"And you say  _I'm_ grim tonight," Suzie said with a laugh.  
  
Tosh looked over at her and gave a small smile. "We're Torchwood. Ours but to do and die."  
  
"At least sometimes we get to reason why, though."  
  
"At least there's that, yes."  
  
Her laptop beeped, and Tosh pulled up the surveillance screen as Suzie readied her gun. "No, it's nothing," she said. "Just the naked dance partying - Jack must have bumped the camera, that's what set off the alarm. Are those  _tentacles_ ?"  
  
"Jack has tentacles?" Suzie asked interestedly, peering over her shoulder at the screen.  
  
"No, one of the aliens. But Jack..." She flushed and minimized the window. "Well, he's enjoying them, at any rate."  
  
Suzie snorted. "I'm sure once he's finished he'll set about arresting them and sending the Praanix back where they came from."  
  
"Which is?"  
  
"No idea. Jack knows. It's probably in the archives."  
  
"Everything's in the archives," Tosh sighed. "And yet no one can ever find a thing."  
  
Another laugh from Suzie, which was more than Tosh had ever heard from her at once. "We entangle ourselves in knots of our own making."  
  
Tosh looked at her sharply. "Rilke?"  
  
"Rilke!" she confirmed. "You've read him?"  
  
"I love him! No one else I know has read Rilke, you know, and--"  
  
Her laptop beeped again, and, hoping Jack was done with the tentacles, she opened up the screen. "Hostage situation," she said. Jack may have been done with the tentacles, but they weren't done with him, and he didn't look happy about it. "Aim for the eyes, that's their biggest weak point!" she yelled to Suzie, who was already racing for the door. "And don't shoot Jack!"  
  
Suzie glanced back. "Even if he deserves it for cocking this whole thing up?"  
  
"Even then," Tosh grinned, grabbing her gun. "Let's go. We can make fun of him later."

**Author's Note:**

> Beta credit to the ever fantastic 51stcenturyfox, who never fails to help me improve. Jack's song choice was all her idea.
> 
> Title shamelessly stolen from Simon and Garfunkel. The poetry quoted within belongs to Emily Dickinson; W. B. Yeats; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and Rainer Maria Rilke. I take full responsibility for the haiku.


End file.
